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If you've ever confronted a bug in a Windows process on a production server, you know what a pain it can be to figure out what's going on. To start with, the developer who can debug the problem is rarely onsite with the production server, so it's either a matter of traveling to the location of the server or debugging remotely. In addition, the tester who found the issue often has difficulty giving the developer who owns the problem enough context to be able to reproduce it even if location is not an issue.

Microsoft and IBM both have remote debuggers, but getting them to work through firewalls can be a challenge. In addition, operations people are always hesitant to allow developers to install debugging software on a production server.

Enter DebugLive, a Web-based, collaborative, remote Windows debugger. DebugLive attempts to address all of these problems. For now it's just for 32-bit Windows programs; eventually it will also cover Linux, Mac, AJAX, and 64-bit programs.

I recently had a discussion and hands-on demo with Donis Marshall, DebugLive founder and CEO. A series of screenshots from that demo follows. To see any of these in full size, just click on the image.

More information, demos, and a free trial offer can be found on the DebugLive site.

Starting a remote debugging session.Joining a remote debugging session.Attaching to a remote process.Displaying the current call stack.Stepping through source code.Setting a conditional breakpoint.

Martin Heller is a contributing editor and reviewer for InfoWorld. Formerly a Web and Windows programming consultant, he developed databases, software, and websites from his office in Andover, MA, from 1986 to 2010. More recently, he has served as VP of technology and education at Alpha Software and chairman and CEO at Tubifi.